Time Tracking Platform

Humatica and Monterail’s successful partnership history kicked off back in 2020 with a code audit of Modus.

The Company and Product

Humatica is an award-winning consulting company that provides market research and benchmarks to help clients accelerate growth and minimize risk.

They assist their partners via a wide array of tailored services ranging from due diligence and operating model re-design to change assurance and Sales Force activation.

Powered by top-of-the-class processes and tools, Humatica delivered services to high-profile corporate and private equity clients, such as Philips, Swiss, Deutsche Telekom, ONE Nordic, and many more.

Client’s feedback

Paul David Simpson

DIRECTOR

Real partnership

Working with Monterail feels like a real partnership. They are a competent team that brings promising results to the table.

The Challenge

One of their core tools, Modus, offers snapshot time data tracking: a clear view of the personnel resource allocation inside the company so managers can easily spot understaffed and overstaffed activities.

Obtaining this data requires a thorough process: Humatica surveys its clients, validates the data, and uploads it to Microsoft PowerBI for data analysis.

Humatica and Monterail’s successful partnership history kicked off back in 2020 with a code audit of Modus. Since then, we have collaborated in different ways.

Organizational performance consultancy is fast-paced and high-stakes. Data should be both reliable and actionable to ensure clients have all the information necessary to make the best decisions for their companies. There is no room for error.

With that in mind, Humatica tasked Monterail with creating Client Portal, a web app to allow them to easily share the PowerBI dashboards with their clients.

The next step was rewriting Modus, an enhancement to the Client Portal app with more intricate activity-tracking features and comprehensive organization structure validation. It would end up consisting of two modules.

The Manager is used by Humatica’s clients, who inform how much time their reportees spend on each activity, which automatically updates the organization structure in real-time. Managers then supervise this information: they can add, edit, and delete employees, change managers, and more. This is where the most complex business logic is and working side-by-side with the client was essential to fully understand how the functionality should work.

The Admin section is used by Humatica consultants, which have overarching permissions and verify and accept manager actions.

Key challenges of the project included:

The common effort required to achieve the final version of the app’s flows.
Very complex business logic with zero room for error.
Operating in a fast-paced environment.

The Process

During the Discovery Phase, we had several calls to work out the project scope and met for a Design workshop when we successfully fine-tuned the requirements list.

Modus, originally written in PHP, was outdated. The new version had to be more modern, safer, and more user-friendly.

We settled for an agile, iterative approach that would allow us not only to capture all of the functionalities, but also address some of the current pain points, recommend corresponding usability enhancements, and also provide a more accurate development estimate.

On the backend side, we used a tried-and-true approach: TypeScript, Node.js, Express, MySQL, and TypeORM. It worked perfectly and we were able to quickly create REST API endpoints. As a highlight, we also created an efficient system for importing records from large CSV files to our database.

On the frontend end, we also went for a battle-tested setup: TypeScript, React, React Query, and Next.js. The application has very complex forms, and we solved all use cases using the formik package.

This is how we made it happen:

Discovery Phase successfully shaped the feature list.
Custom implementation to cover all business needs while ensuring scalability.
Dedicated system to import large CSV files to the database.

Team’s voice

Gilbert Komin

FRONTEND DEVELOPER

Understanding the customer needs

We managed to meet our challenge using tools we know very well. The recipe for our success is understanding the customer needs, thoughtful decisions on how to implement complex business logic, and properly selecting the stack.

The Outcome

The Client Portal MVP was delivered on time, in two months.

As a highlight, it allows Humatica to manage client logins and control what data clients can see in the dashboards by connecting to the underlying access rights (RLS) in Humatica PowerBI dashboards.

The Modus’ two-month Discovery Phase (December/21 to January/22) was followed by seven months of development to rewrite the tool.

With the new version, Humatica’s services have been bolstered. The staff saves time managing the complex data, and clients have a more comprehensive view of the time allocation in their companies.

The iterative delivery approach was a success. We updated Humatica constantly on the progress, ensuring that both the project and budget were on track.

Additionally, the rewritten application is easy to use and safe, ready for scaling up new features at any moment.

The success of this project hinged on the following factors:

The new tool is ready for scaling up when necessary.
Humatica’s services are now streamlined and strengthened.